DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 116, 5 September 2005

Welcome to this year's 36th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The first full week in September should be an exciting one for users and fans of Free Software - GNOME 2.12, Ubuntu 5.10 Preview, and SUSE Linux 10.0 RC1 are all expected to hit the download mirrors later this week. But before that happens we will take a brief look at the "smart" package manager in Mandriva, check out "SUPER", a performance-enhancing subproject of SUSE Linux, and revisit the Linspire versus Freespire controversy. Our featured distribution of the week is Elive, a great live CD featuring the Enlightenment window manager - a project that is also the recipient of our US$250 August 2005 donation. Happy reading!

Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in ogg (6.03MB) or mp3 (4.49MB) formats.

In a recent interview for Linux Format, Mandriva's founder Gaël Duval hinted that the distribution's long-established urpmi package manager will soon incorporate some elements from smart, a package management tool developed by Conectiva:

"They [Conectiva] have some good technology in the Smart software. It's like urpmi, the dependency software of Mandrake, but they have better algorithms and it's more sophisticated. We are going to merge urpmi with Smart into a great separate package."

Although no further details were provided in the interview and Mandriva's web sites and Wiki pages are rather short on detail, it looks like a fundamental change is taking place in managing software in Mandriva.

But what is the current status? Both urpmi and smart are provided in the recent beta releases of Mandriva Linux 2006. The urpmi utility remains the default package management tool in the distribution, with smart available as an optional extra. It seems that, rather than simply replacing urpmi with smart, the developers are integrating the latter's technology into urpmi. That way, users who have become accustomed to managing software in Mandrake will not have to learn to use a new tool.

Still, the original idea of smart was to develop a more universal package management tool for a variety of Linux distributions. Although the software is still under heavy development, it has a potential to become a new standard in Linux package management - especially because it includes support for a large number of package installation mechanisms, including dpkg, apt-get, Red Carpet, RPM, yum, and urpmi. If more Linux distributions embraced the tool, we could soon see a real break-through in ease of use of software management in most Linux distributions, the lack of which has often been cited by would-be Linux converts as the number one reason for low market share of Linux on the desktop. As such, smart is a project worth supporting.

To find out more about smart please visit its web site at smartrpm.org.

With the opening of the SUSE Linux distribution to the open source community of developers and testers, it was only a matter of time before new subprojects started branching out from the popular distribution. One of the more interesting among them is SUPER, an acronym for SUSE Performance Enhanced Release. As the name suggests, the main purpose of SUPER is to build a SUSE distribution that includes various speed and performance tweaks to make the desktop faster and more responsive than the standard SUSE Linux desktop.

The brain behind SUPER is Andreas Girardet, perhaps better known as the founder and lead developer of Yoper, which he claimed to be the fastest distribution on earth. Among the included speed and performance optimisation tweaks one can find prelinking, pre-loading of KDE and OpenOffice.org, Con Kolivas kernel patches, i686 optimisation of certain critical components, and other enhancements. The SUPER project is currently under heavy development, but a series of performance-enhanced single-CD SUPER SUSE 10.0 releases are already available for free download. If you are interested in the technical details of SUPER and wish to test/help, you can find more detailed information on the SUPER project page and carry on further discussion on the opensuse-optimize mailing list.

Linspire versus Freespire

If there was one story that many Linux news sites found much interest in during the past week then it has to be the Linspire versus Freespire controversy. For those who have just returned from a holiday, let's recap briefly what happened. A new live CD, called Freespire, was created by one Andrew Betts. He did it by reusing the freely available source code of Linspire, after stripping any proprietary components and Linspire trademarks. Freespire proved to be enormously popular right from the start only to be taken offline a few days after its first "proof-of-concept" release. Many observers have concluded that the Freespire project must have been shut down by Linspire due to the company's objection to the new project and its name - a rather amusing repeat of the famous Lindows (Linspire's former name) versus Windows court battles from a few years ago.

Exactly what happened between Andrew Betts and Linspire will probably never be known publicly. But before you go and accuse Linspire of using hardball tactics to scare off a small independent developer, please read the Linspire statement on their web site. The company doesn't see anything wrong with taking Linspire's source code and turning it into a new project; in fact, it even applauds and encourages developers to do so. This is all done in the spirit of Free Software and GPL, and far from any hostile exchange between the two parties that some online news sites suspected to had happened.

As a matter of fact, things worked out rather nicely for all involved. Andrew Betts has renamed the project to Squiggle OS, while Linspire has decided to give their flagship product away for free until September 6th, read this page for details. However, before downloading the product, please remember that the free version of real Linspire is a fairly bare-bones product and not much fun without purchasing the US$50/year Click-N-Run membership for installing extra applications....

Asianux 2.0 released for download

Our last week's lead story about the much-hyped Asianux 2.0 has attracted the attention of several Chinese online publications, including a mention at Slashdot China. We are pleased to report that some of our criticism of the project has been addressed: Asianux 2.0 ISO images are now available for free download and the formatting of Asianux press releases has been cleaned up. However, our main criticism remains valid - without opening up the project to public participation and without inviting other main Linux players in the region to join in, Asianux will remain a niche player barely surviving in the three countries where it operates rather than becoming a pan-Asian Linux force that will bring its operating system to servers and desktops of many Asian users.

Asianux 2.0 - now available for free download(full image size: 411kB)

Featured distribution of the week: Elive

Elive

Of all the live CD distributions released over the past few weeks, Elive was undoubtedly the one that caused the biggest stir among Linux users. The reason is simple: the Elive live CD features one of the most amazing, yet relatively little-known alternative window managers - Enlightenment. Both the stable version 16.x and the much-awaited development version 17 of Enlightenment are present on Elive 0.3 and one can choose either of them from the post-boot menu.

Most users who are new to Linux are normally exposed to either KDE or GNOME, one of the two most popular desktop environments on Linux. XFce and Fluxbox are great alternatives for older machines with limited resources - they are capable of providing a fast desktop for underpowered computer systems at the expense of having fewer bells and whistles under their belts. And then there is Enlightenment - an amazing window manager that is just so much different from anything else you've experienced before. Enlightenment is pure fun and joy right there at your fingertips - with all the eye candy you can imagine, but without the overhead of heavy resource requirements.

We don't know much about the developers behind the Elive project, except for the name of the founder and lead coder - Samuel 'Thanatermesis' Flores, a 25-year old resident of Liège in Belgium. He has done a great job - while the earlier beta release (version 0.1) was a rather buggy product, the latest release (version 0.3) is a nicely-designed live CD with a hard disk installation option and support for a large number of languages. The first reviews of the product can be found at DistroReviews and Flavio's TechnoTalk.

For more information about Elive, please visit the project's home page at elivecd.org, then download the ISO image from one of the growing number of available mirrors - you won't regret it!

Elive 0.3 - a live CD with all the eye candy of the latest Enlightenment window manager(full image size: 353kB)

Released Last Week

Elive 0.3

Elive is a Morphix-based Linux live CD designed for fans of the Enlightenment desktop environment. Version 0.3 is the project's first stable release: "Elive 0.3 released. This version includes hard disk installation, NVIDIA driver, the possibility to compile and install any program in the live CD system or install any extra package on the fly, stable and fully configured environment. With this version installed on the hard disk, you have an option to upgrade to another version with a simple apt-get upgrade." Also includes support for several languages, the second beta of OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the latest Enlightenment 17 straight from its CVS repository. Find more information on the distribution's home page.

Asianux 2.0

Asianux 2.0 has been released: "Today, three leading Asian Linux OS vendors - Red Flag Software Ltd, Miracle Linux Corporation and Haansoft Inc - jointly announced the general availability of a new generation Linux server platform - Asianux 2.0. The release of Asianux 2.0 reaffirms the commitment that Asianux will continuously bring the latest open source technology and high quality service to Asian enterprise customers and partners. The powerful features of Asianux 2.0 make it a perfect open platform for key enterprise applications." Read the rest of the press release for further details.

Linux+ Live 2005-09

A new version of Linux+ Live, a live DVD based on Aurox Linux and Fedora Core, has been released: "We are back again with a new release of Linux+ Live DVD from September 2005 Linux+. As always, it also includes many applications added in previous editions. The most notable new ones are: development version of EnterpriseDB 2005, which is Oracle compatible PostgreSQL based database system; newest MySQL server and MySQL Administrator for easing administration of databases; many applications for mobile phones; databases administration tool (KNoda); TeX editors (TeXmacs and Winefish); collection manager (Tellico); blog editor (Drivel); web editor (Nvu)...." See the release announcement for further information.

Linux+ Live - a live DVD based on Aurox Linux and Fedora Core(full image size: 223kB)

Ultima Linux 4

Ultima Linux is an easy-to-use Slackware-based distribution with an automated package management tool called "ulupdate". A brand new version was released over the weekend: "The Ultima Linux development team, also known as Martin Ultima, is proud to announce the immediate availability of the Ultima Linux 4 release. This new version contains a great number of improvements and other fun stuff, and is almost effortlessly easy to install as well. You don't want to miss it." Also includes kernel 2.4.31, X.Org 6.8.2, optional OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta, Java 1.5, support for wireless networking, and many other new packages and features. Read the full release announcement and changelog on this page.

Although we have discussed on these pages the possibility to award the August 2005 donation to MPlayer, it turned out that the MPlayer project had raised what they required to get a new server and was no longer accepting cash as a form of donation. Therefore we are pleased to announce that, by popular demand, the August 2005 donation of US$250 goes to the Enlightenment project. The project produces the Enlightenment window manager - a highly graphical, widely theme-able, extremely configurable, yet unobtrusive user interface for Linux, UNIX, FreeBSD and other platforms.

As always, our donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch and LinuxCD.org, which contributes US$50 every month. LinuxCD.org is an online store selling low-cost Linux/BSD CDs - they have the largest selection, inclusive of all the latest releases, and they offer the lowest prices. Next time you need to order your favourite Linux or BSD CDs, get them from LinuxCD.org.

------------------------------
Payment Details:
------------------------------
Transaction ID: 0E300641V11921840
Sales Tax: $0.00
Total: $250.00 USD
Item/Product Name: Donation
Invoice ID: 244855
Buyer: DistroWatch.com
Message: This is a donation by DistroWatch.com as part of our programme to support the development of Free Software. Keep up the good work!

Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme:

Since the launch of the DistroWatch Donations Programme in March 2004, we have donated a total of US$4,905 to various Free Software projects.

Distro talk at irc.freenode.net #distrowatch

Due to several requests from our readers, we started an experimental IRC node at freenode.net about two weeks ago. The idea was to create an IRC channel for discussing distributions and DistroWatch-related topics and share experiences with other "distro junkies" on the Internet. This note serves as an official announcement about the IRC channel - we invite our readers to join in the discussion. If the node is not active, feel free to create it - hopefully it won't last long before you are joined by other like-minded individuals. As always, please let us know how you feel about this feature, and indeed, any other feature and request you might have.

New distributions on the waiting list

BSDLive. BSDLive is a business card-size mini live CD based on FreeBSD.

ELE. ELE is a bootable live CD Linux distribution with focus on privacy-related software. It is based on Damn Small Linux and aims to be as small as possible.

Ging. Ging is a live operating system that you can burn on a CD. It is based on Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (which is based on Debian, GNU and the FreeBSD kernel). Ging consists entirely of free software (as per Debian Free Software Guidelines) and is committed to remain this way.

Mupper. Mupper is a Gentoo-based rescue CD project for the Pegasos computers. It contains various tools, such as Parted and Midnight Commander, as well as support for various file systems, including FAT, VFAT, ReiserFS, XFS and ext3. Network tools, such as Snort and tcpdump, are also included.

Just a quick word about Software Freedom Day - it's on 10th September this year (2005). Find out if there's a local team near your locale, and join in the fun. You may convert one or two proprietary OS users to Linux or BSD users in the process...

...Ric2 • elive (by mark_alec on 2005-09-05 12:42:36 GMT from Australia)
Another Monday, another great read of Distrowatch weekly.

Elive certainly looks interesting. I have heard a lot about enlightenment but have never used it. I shall use it on my next computer (emerge e).3 • elive 0.3 (by fez on 2005-09-05 13:08:16 GMT from Germany)
The DE is absolutely stunning and very useable, if you consider that "eye-candy" most often means "pain-ass".The hardware detection even recognizes my nvidia card.

Looking forward for the next release!4 • Linspire/Freespire broohaha (by John Coonfield on 2005-09-05 13:28:30 GMT from United States)
The give-away hit OSNews, /. and here, and was picked up elsewhere as well, so the servers are absolutely hammered at the moment. And, recently, the cost of CNR has been split into two options: 1. Bare-bones, download software only-USD20 per year. 2. Download software, get OS updates, get discounts on software they sell, USD49.95.5 • Donation (by d00m3d on 2005-09-05 13:44:43 GMT from Hong Kong)
Donation to Enlightenment is good. I would like to nominate Busybox, the small piece of program that can resemble many parts of coreutils, which made benefits to various mini-distros and even installer projects of major distros as next month's project for donation.

Looking forward to reading the next release! Cheers!6 • feedback on donations (by anonymous coward on 2005-09-05 14:34:16 GMT from United States)
just a suggestion...to be a little more transparent to your regular readers regarding donations. we currently have no idea whether the recipient has even acknowledged receipt of donated money. why not post the thank you note or a snippet thereof in the next issue of dw. if they don't respond, post that also. that way, we can differentiate who was raised with manners, and who was raised in a barn. i can guarantee that you would get a "thank you" if the money was donated to me ;-)

thanks,anon7 • RE: feedback on donations (by ladislav on 2005-09-05 14:47:29 GMT from Taiwan)
Things are not always that simple. Some donation methods try hard to hide the particulars of the donor; the SourceForge system is the perfect example of this. Apparently, donating through SourceForge means that the recipient of the donation doesn't know who the money comes from and doesn't even get the "note" accompanying the donation! Needless to say, many many open source projects are hosted by SourceForge and they use the SourceForge donations system.

One other thing I hate about the SourceForge system is that they only accept donations in certain denominations, so you can't donate a sum of money you want to donate, only the sum that is acceptable. I don't understand why they don't allow the donor to decide on the sum - surely, it is much simpler to implement it that way than to provide 6 donations buttons for various denominations.8 • Podcast? (by LinuxHungry on 2005-09-05 15:57:54 GMT from United States)
What happened to the Podcast of distrowatch weekly?9 • Donations. (by BreMac on 2005-09-05 17:40:01 GMT from Canada)
Personally, I think I good project to donate to would be ZeroInstall.10 • Donations (by zukakog on 2005-09-05 18:23:30 GMT from United States)
"12/2004: UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation"

What happened to:

"08/2005: Red Cross - Hurricane Katrina Relief"11 • Can we donate to distrowatch monthly donation (by monkeymartin on 2005-09-05 19:08:27 GMT from Canada)
I would like to donate to the monthly donation. Is their a way I can do this. I know that I could just donate to the project its self but I would rather donate through Distrowatch.com12 • Pacman is the only package manager that we need (by monkeymartin on 2005-09-05 19:12:35 GMT from Canada)
What mandrive is doing with their package manager is great I think it will help linux a lot.

The best package manager is pacman (from Arch Linux) I wish every distro used pacman (this is all a distro needs for packag managment)13 • Freespire...... (by Distrowatch Fan and more fan on 2005-09-05 19:15:14 GMT from United States)
I feel Andrew Betts was doing a good thing making Freespire......I could care less if it was Linspire stripped down or not .....The fact he was attempting to make his own distro was awsome...There are not alot of people willing to attempt such a feat and he did ....

So with that I say.....

If your reading this Andrew Betts---- Good Luck With Your Re-Named Project..... :)I look forward to trying it out (if you decide to release it that is)......

As for Linspire...... Thank you for giving us all the chance to own a truely awsome operating system....

I have always loved Linspire and now am happy to say I own my very own copy thanks to your generous offer......AND...After witnessing the power and performance of Linspire 5.0, I will be purchasing a CNR membership to keep my new found software updated.........

Thanks Distrowatch for all the wonderful stories and OS updates......

The Distrowatch, Linspire, and now squiggleOS Fan14 • distro is great!!! (by klhrevolutionist on 2005-09-05 19:24:22 GMT from United States)
Another great read!!!And I hope that since I am an avid reader you don't mind if I tell people about the coming: Puppy Foundation Weekend moved forward to 9-12 Sep 2005

Read about it http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/LatestNews15 • SUSE and few other things... (by Scott Wilson on 2005-09-05 20:21:32 GMT from United States)
Interesting, how popular SUSE is becoming. I was wondering if each new flavor should be spun off to its own page. Much like Fedora and Red Hat was. This is going to be interesting, will Novell kill off Suse Linux, force the users to Novell Desktop Linux or the community project?

I reloaded SUSE 9.3 last weekend, Suse is the only version of linux that is avalible to the average user from a retail stores in Phoenix Area. That way I could send some out to the store and "purchase" Linux. I could get it installed for them or help them get things working.

As for Katrina aftermath, its horrible. But there is an oppertunity for the Linux Community to help out.

China also has had a typhoon that has cause mass destruction and deaths. I also know Europe (Austria) is still cleaning up from the devasting floods, two weeks ago. Help out wher you can.16 • Mepis release (by Rune on 2005-09-05 20:25:52 GMT from Bolivia)
If I am not wrong, there will be a SimplyMepis release in 2005-09-XX. It is on the Mepis Webpage. Could that get on the "Summary of expected upcoming releases" ??17 • Donations (by Rune on 2005-09-05 20:32:01 GMT from Bolivia)
I agree with Scott Wilson on the subject of donations. Distrowatch should focus on free software donation; we can all individually donate to disaster relief. The tsunami was exceptional due to the magnitude and the vulnerability of the victims.18 • SUPER is not so super (by fnobths on 2005-09-05 20:34:05 GMT from United States)
I just downloaded SUPER and I didn't't care for it. I thought the install was a little hairy. I set up lilo to install on /dev/hda3 and it wiped out my MBR. (I have been using Linux for 6 years so I know how lilo is set up.) After it was installed it was no better or faster then any of the Linux distro's I've used. I think Arch is a lot faster. I thought Andreas Girardet did a good job on Yoper, but this is not so great. I know it is still beta but he still has a long way to go. One good thing was it ID my network card by it's proper name. I have a Netgear card and every Linux Distro ID's it as a National Semiconductor, no big deal, but nice.

On the other hand I finally tried Vector Linux 5.1, it was nice, no complainants there.19 • RE: SUPER is not so super (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-05 21:06:46 GMT from Italy)
It seems that there is something badly wrong with SUSE 10.0 and derivatives when installing Grub or Lilo. I installed beta 3 "regular", I set up Grub to install to /dev/ha7 but it overwrote Grub on /dev/hda8 as well (where my main system, Kanotix resides)I reported the bug and eventually they said it was my own mistake. Thank you very much, I have installed hundreds, possibly thousands of operating systems and I never had anything like that. I won't waste my time reporting bugs any longer.20 • Super and Yoper (by andrew on 2005-09-05 21:45:48 GMT from Australia)
I wonder if Andreas' involvement in Super means the end of Yoper? For a while now Yoper website hasn't been very active, but the last bits of info I caught regarding the next release mentioned possible switch to Smart package manager... it would be a pity if Yoper stalled.21 • Podcast. (by Shawn Milo on 2005-09-06 00:05:20 GMT from United States)
Sorry for the lack of a podcast last week -- there was a miscommunication, probably mostly my fault. Look for a new edition of the podcast this week, as well as an RSS feed.

Shawn Milo22 • Donations (by Scott Wilson on 2005-09-06 00:24:38 GMT from United States)
Mostly, in the US the Red Cross is asking for Money. Not StuffHere in Phoenix as well in other states we have Sept 7, Tirol in Austria is having a telethon for the Flood victims in the Tirolean alps. China? Who knows.

Let Distrowatch pick Open Source projects to donate to. YOU pick a charity or Cause to make a PERSONEL donation to.23 • SUSE future? (by Scott Wilson on 2005-09-06 00:32:42 GMT from United States)
So what do you all think SUSE future is?Will Novell continue to offer Suse Professional and the Novell desktop Linux?Kill off SUSE Professional force everyone to either the community base Open SUSE or their Enterprise Linux? Much like Fedora/Red Hat. Or will SUSE become, (dare I say it) like Debian and the base of countless off shoots as well as a its own strong Distro?24 • Linspire (by Sauvage on 2005-09-06 00:57:19 GMT from United States)
Could anybody put a bittorrent of Linspire? It's impossible to download it. I've been trying to download it since early this morning, but no luck.25 • RE: Linspire (by 1c3d0g on 2005-09-06 02:39:42 GMT from Aruba)
Here you go. This took me a while to track down...it's indeed very hard to get a Linspire .torrent
26 • Andreas Girardet (by hfb on 2005-09-06 05:13:19 GMT from United States)
...is a nut.27 • Linspire-Torrent (by Anonymous on 2005-09-06 11:08:54 GMT from Germany)
I don't know if this is the newest version:

Taken from the german heise-forum http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/go.shtml?read=1&msg_id=8762357&forum_id=84292&showthread=128 • podcast (by distroWatcher at 2005-09-06 16:05:01 GMT from Ukraine)
shawn milo -my superhiro!29 • link to smart (by rob on 2005-09-06 16:50:39 GMT from United States)
The link to the "Smart package manager" is broken. I think it is just incorrect as I easily found the project via Google.30 • Podcast feedback. (by Shawn Milo on 2005-09-06 17:18:42 GMT from United States)
distroWatcher -- thanks! Please leave any feedback here so that Ladislav and I can both read it. More podcasts will be coming!

If anyone has suggestions about podcasts (frequency, content, or whatever), let us know here!

Also, if anyone would like to volunteer to create original (podsafe) music for the intro or outro, please contact me at MiloCast at gmail.

By the way, I may start playing reader/listener voicemail in the podcast. You can record an mp3 or ogg with Audacity, or (in the US) call 1-206-3-D-WATCH (206-339-2824) and leave a message, which will be sent to us as an electronic file. The quality's not great, so record your own if you have the equipment.

Greetings32 • Re: Super and Yoper (by Ariszló on 2005-09-06 21:25:29 GMT from Hungary)I wonder if Andreas' involvement in Super means the end of Yoper?

Yoper is now a community distribution and the team is quite active. Find how recent the developer packages, not yet ready for mass consumption, are:

ftp://us2.yoper.com/pub/linux/yoper/yoper/mach/RPMS.core(mirrors: http://www.yoper.com/download.html )33 • Andreas (by wary at 2005-09-07 05:02:35 GMT from Australia)
Be wary of donating your time and energy to this guy.. He seems to enjoy conflict and being abusive.Once bitten, twice shy.34 • RE: Article by Alan N. Canton (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-07 05:43:09 GMT from Italy)
It is my favorite too...35 • Mandriva screenshot without permission (by istoyanov on 2005-09-07 07:34:45 GMT from Bulgaria)
Thanks for another GREAT ISSUE of Distrowatch Weekly!!!

And a quick note:"You don't have permission to access /images/screenshots/mandriva-2006-beta3.png on this server."

Cheers!36 • Donations (by Mike on 2005-09-07 11:29:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
May I suggest libogg / libvorbis. I understand ogg playback still needs optimisation. As you're using ogg in your podcast, it makes sense.37 • donations and more..!! (by KiM on 2005-09-07 12:43:45 GMT from Egypt)
here is another good monday with distro...thank u..i fully agree with your point of view to support Enlightment as a very inspiring project...alsothanks for Linspire for this opportunity although i got it a month ago.. and wishing all good luck to Freespire now known as squiggleOS.. hope to try it very soon..

Let's hope the next release lasts longer than 3 days ;)39 • Podcast (by Andrew Betts on 2005-09-07 14:19:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Love the podcast.

I'm a lazy reader and it is always nice to have audio versions of stuff.40 • No subject (by Me on 2005-09-07 17:38:45 GMT from Germany)
Anonymous Penguin: if its your favorite Distro do not google for Benix. And if you are searching a lean and fast Installation do never ever under no Circumstances download CORPIX. Might be you would be convinced to change your Mind.41 • Podcast (by Mark at 2005-09-07 17:55:50 GMT from United States)
Like the idea of podcasting the Weekly but is there a RSS/XML so I can subscribe?? IMHO, the true power of podcasting has to be its automatic d/l via an aggregator.

Regards42 • RE: No subject (by Me) (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-07 18:59:56 GMT from Italy)
LOL! I am always glad to try new distros and willing to change my mind if I find something *really good*That is how I found Kanotix after all.43 • CORPIX (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-07 20:27:58 GMT from Italy)
And BTW, I had already tried the beta of CORPIX (CPX-Mini) and I was rather disappointed: no way I could make pppoe work. Kano's script doesn't work and I couldn't compile rp-pppoe (no compilers)

I didn't try it because it is based on a oldish version of Kanotix (I need at least Kernel 2.6.12 for all my hardware to work)

Anyway everything can be found here:

http://debian.tu-bs.de/project/44 • Podcast! (by LinuxHungry on 2005-09-08 02:51:21 GMT from United States)
The podcast was great. Thanks.45 • Ging (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-08 04:45:12 GMT from Italy)
On my P4 box it took exactly 1 hour and 25 minutes from startup to shutdown. I had a fully functional Gnome only for about 5 minutes and all I did was opening a terminal and printing "uname -a"46 • DWW Podcast XML (by Shawn Milo on 2005-09-08 13:08:36 GMT from United States)
Yes, there is an XML feed as of this week. Check the top of this page for the XML link.

As of now, there is only an XML feed for the mp3 file, not the ogg. That's because most portable players don't play ogg. :o(

If some of you use an aggregator AND have a portable player which supports the ogg format, let us know and we'll create a separate ogg XML feed.

Milo47 • re: Donations (by Anon Doofer on 2005-09-08 21:34:53 GMT from United States)
Donations (by Rune on 2005-09-05 20:32:01 GMT from Bolivia)I agree with Scott Wilson on the subject of donations. Distrowatch should focus on free software donation; we can all individually donate to disaster relief. The tsunami was exceptional due to the magnitude and the vulnerability of the victims.

I agree with Scott too, but this last sentence is the most ignorant and callous statement I've read in a very long time.48 • elive for *really* old hardware? (by butters on 2005-09-08 22:14:17 GMT from United States)
First, thanks for donating to the Enlightenment project. I think they bring a lot to the table when it comes to chipping away at the desktop linux enigma from the bottom up.

Has anyone tried ELive on a machine with 64MB of RAM and no preexisting swap partition? Should I even bother?49 • Not setup for RSS (by Anonymous on 2005-09-09 03:38:25 GMT from United States)
FYI: Loving the mp3 of the podcast!!!!!!!!!

PS: you rock Ladislav Bodnar.50 • VLOS 1.2.1-rc1 (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-09 12:33:10 GMT from Italy)
This release sounds like a sincere gesture of good will.I have been a harsh critic, but now I hope they can redeem themselves.51 • Super (by گä†ü®ñ on 2005-09-10 02:21:58 GMT from United States)
There is NO WAY I will ever think that SuSE is anything of a "Super OS", Why just not too long ago, I had SuSE Inc themselves send me a copy of 9.3 Professional, trying to praise as to how good their product was, and I need to switch, blah blah blah. I was like "Ok, I will give it the Debian Taste Test - Distro Challange" and see which Distro outdid which. Hands down, Debian ROCKED the hell out of SuSE. Why, as a matter of fact, it only took me 45 Minutes before I actually snapped that CD of SuSE in half and swore I would NEVER use another version of their distro again.

So, as far as I am concerned...... SuSE.....never had it...never will!!!!52 • Re: Super (by Ariszló on 2005-09-10 03:34:54 GMT from Hungary)
Now everybody will know that you prefer Debian to SuSE. And nobody will know why?53 • Re: Re: Freespire...... (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-10 04:44:00 GMT from Italy)
Keep up the good work, Andrew :)

I also very much hope that the next release can be installed.54 • Re: Re: Super (by Anonymous Penguin on 2005-09-10 04:54:18 GMT from Italy)
"Now everybody will know that you prefer Debian to SuSE. And nobody will know why?"

Lol, personally I tend to like both, even if I give Debian the edge.However I give SUSE to newbies, I find it more suitable.